


Who'd Be a Fan of Sherlock Holmes?

by Ereshkigal



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Everything is Metaphors, Meta, Queer History, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 14:47:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7688557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ereshkigal/pseuds/Ereshkigal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Codes, queers and ghosts in BBC Sherlock.  A very meta meta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who'd Be a Fan of Sherlock Holmes?

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been lurking in Sherlock fandom for a little while. Not long ago I realized I wanted to write my own meta about the show, and I started saving posts that made me think, but I’m sure there’s a lot that’s influenced me that I’ve missed. Please, feel free to bring up work you think I might be referencing without realizing it -- even if I’ve never seen it before, I’m happy to add links to relevant resources.
> 
> They’re linked in the essay below, but I wanted to especially mention [Loudest Subtext in Television](https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-R0-ikRKha4YzVNc2hscnJRbjg&usp=sharing&tid=0B-R0-ikRKha4Si1rUnF6WHBmRG8#), [Rebekah](http://gaybees.co.vu/), and [Heimish the Ideal Husband](http://heimishtheidealhusband.tumblr.com/) as writers whose work I kept coming back to. If you like my meta, you should definitely read all of theirs. Transcripts from the episodes are all from [Ariane Devere](http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/), though I’ve occasionally modified them to make them more concise.
> 
> I may be a lurker in this particular fandom, but I've been active in others for nearly two decades now, since my first days as a preteen discovering X-files fic archives and looking up cool poisons to include in my stories -- a skill that remains useful in Sherlock fandom! I’ve learned so much over the years, and made so many good friends through fan communities online. This essay is, more than anything else, a love letter to my fellow fans, my fellow writers, and my fellow queers. May we never have to hide our beautiful selves again. <3

## Part 1: Investigating the Death of the Author

The first time I read Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, I totally missed that it was Sherlock Holmes fanfic. It was many years ago, and at that point everything I knew about Holmes was absorbed through cultural osmosis - I had not read any of Arthur Conan Doyle’s works, nor taken in any of the hundreds of adaptations.

When Umberto Eco died this past spring, I reread the novel and the references leapt out. The main character is William of Baskerville, a nod to the classic Holmes story Hound of the Baskervilles. William is called in to investigate a murder at an abbey, his brilliant deductions narrated by a faithful companion, Adso. Why did I suddenly see the references? In the intervening time I’d watched another fanwork, the BBC adaptation _Sherlock_ (henceforth BBC Sherlock). I’d gone on to read several of Doyle’s canon stories and with all that context, the homage was apparent.

Eco was not just a novelist and a Sherlock Holmes fan, but also an academic - perhaps the closest the world has ever come to a popular semiotician. Much of his work expanded on that of another well-known semiotician, Roland Barthes. In his 1967 essay _[The Death of the Author](http://www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf)_ , Barthes argues that the meaning of texts is provided not by its author but by its reader:

> [A] text consists of multiple writings, issuing from several cultures and entering into dialogue with each other, into parody, into contestation; but there is one place where this multiplicity is collected, united, and this place is not the author, as we have hitherto said it was, but the reader: the reader is the very space in which are inscribed, without any being lost, all the citations a writing consists of; the unity of a text is not in its origin, it is in its destination; [...] we know that to restore to writing its future, we must reverse its myth: the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author.

Eco likely meant for his readers to see Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in William and Adso, but I did not, and this is only one obvious way in which an author’s intended interpretation can fail to be read. In addition to different literary references, readers can and do have different personal and cultural experiences, different blind spots and soft spots.

 _The Death of the Author_ has been embraced by many parts of fandom. One reason for this is how it likens all authors to fic writers and so legitimizes their work:

> The writer can only imitate a gesture forever anterior, never original; his only power is to combine the different kinds of writing, to oppose some by others, so as never to sustain himself by just one of them; if he wants to express himself, at least he should know that the internal “thing” he claims to “translate” is itself only a readymade dictionary whose words can be explained (defined) only by other words, and so on ad infinitum.

More importantly, the Death of the Author theory champions the interpretation of the Reader over the intentions of the Author. Or, in fanspeak, “fuck canon”. [Elizabeth Minkel](http://elizabethminkel.com/), who runs the podcast _[Fansplaining](http://fansplaining.tumblr.com/)_ with [Flourish Klink](http://www.flourishklink.com/), [declares](http://fansplaining.tumblr.com/post/146210283278/transcript-episode-24-kfan-trapped-in-his-own):

> My motto is “fuck canon” and I would never in my wildest dreams want anything I write or read to have anything to do with the people who make the source material.

In [an episode about racism and fandom](http://fansplaining.tumblr.com/post/144813752418/transcript-episode-22a-race-and-fandom), Minkel talks about how this approach can be transgressive, but isn’t always:

> [One] of the things I really value about slash—and slash has tons of problems and someday we’re gonna actually sit down and have a slash episode—but one thing I really value about slash is it doesn’t wait for anything, and it just makes the text, queers the text immediately. It’s not waiting for the content creators to catch up and often doesn’t care about that. And I think it’s pretty telling that because I think of white people’s… I don’t know if it’s discomfort or underlying racism or whatever, but I’ve never, I shouldn’t say never because I think that erases—there’s plenty of people doing plenty of work. But the fact that it has to come from the content creators first makes me sad. Because one thing, I’m a very fuck canon kind of person and I love slash because we’re like “I’m not gonna wait for you! Fuck you! They’re gay!” And it’s sad that we have to wait for the people that we’re supposed to be kind of fixing to come in and say “no, you can’t ignore it anymore.”

This quote, like the two-part episode from which it was taken, gets at some important tensions within fandom. How can it be liberatory for fans to interpret a text however they want, when some of those interpretations are themselves oppressive? And how can the Reader’s interpretation be paramount when a writer or director make content that fans “can’t ignore [...] anymore”?

Eco may have embraced the Death of the Author, but he didn’t accept the Rise of the Reader. In his essay _[Interpretation and Overinterpretation](http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/e/Eco_91.pdf)_ , he pushes back against the idea that all readings are created equal:

> Between the unattainable intention of the author and the arguable intention of the reader there is the transparent intention of the text, which disproves an untenable interpretation.

Eco strips the Reader of their power and vests it in the Text. But did the Reader have too much power? Or were they simply failing to heed the warning: with great power comes great responsibility?

[Rukmini Pande](https://twitter.com/rukminipande), in the Fansplaining episode on racism and fandom, tells us:

> You can’t have it both ways. You can’t keep telling yourselves and everyone else around you that this is a space where you come to to expand storylines and to push back against toxic cultural messages, and at the same time maintain that this is a line too far, that this is not something that is within your control.

If the stories we tell shape people's lives, then that’s true of fanworks as well as original works. If good representation inspires, if lack of representation marginalizes, if stereotypes harm, then they do so in fanfiction as well as in original fiction.

All three theories - the primacy of the Author, the Death of the Author, and Eco’s intention of the Text - fail to account for the inherently communal nature of storytelling. The draw and the power of stories lies in the way they communicate and create shared culture. Over the cooling corpses of the Author and the Reader, then, we raise a new symbol: the Fan.

Like the Author and the Reader before them, the Fan is present everywhere: in the co-workers chatting about last night’s episode, in the English teachers lecturing students and pop culture theorists writing articles, in the politicians who reference myths in their speeches, in the directors who adapt novels and write sequels, and yes, of course, in online fandom. What makes all of these people Fans is their relationship to each other and to the source text. A Fan exists within a community. A Fan shares their interpretations and their derivations. A Fan synthesizes both text and culture, and so reshapes both text and culture. 

And if the stories we tell matter, then the role of the Fan is among the most important. After all, who else is a fan if not a person to whom a story matters?  
  


### A History of Queer Coding

Eco, in his attempts to vest power in the Text, gave guidance for how to make an interpretation:

> In order to read both the world and texts suspiciously one must have elaborated some kind of obsessive method. Suspicion, in itself, is not pathological: both the detective and the scientist suspect on principle that some elements, evident but not apparently important, may be evidence of something else that is not evident—and on this basis they elaborate a new hypothesis to be tested. But the evidence is considered as a sign of something else only on three conditions: that it cannot be explained more economically; that it points to a single cause [...]; and that it fits in with the other evidence.

Eco believes we can use these guidelines not to arrive at a single correct interpretation, but to reject incorrect interpretations. His reference in the quote above to scientific research is therefore apt. Most research works not by affirming the truth of a theory but by rejecting as many alternatives as possible. After all, we have no access to objective truth. How can we compare our theories directly to it? We can only reject with certainty, never accept; only disprove, never prove. But if we disprove diligently, we can get ourselves close enough to proof. As Sherlock Holmes [famously advises](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100291.txt): “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

One wonders: if we can disprove enough alternate suspects to apprehend a murderer, or enough alternate hypotheses to believe in a theory, why can’t we disprove enough alternate interpretations to find a definitive reading of a story?

“No artist desires to prove anything,” Oscar Wilde writes in the preface to _[The Picture of Dorian Gray](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm)_. “Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.”

This may have been Wilde’s honest belief about art, but it’s important to understand his cultural context. A gay writer in the midst of a virulently homophobic culture, Wilde told stories that could be interpreted in at least two ways: as queer stories by his queer readers, and as conceptual, aesthetic pieces by mainstream culture. The queer reading was necessarily the less obvious one, meant to be understood only by queer readers whose own contexts allowed them to decode the various symbols and allusions. Wilde warns in _Dorian Gray_ ’s preface: “All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril."

It is distinctly possible that Wilde would have preferred to write explicitly queer stories rather than symbolically queer ones. But queerness was then “the love that dare not speak its name”, a phrase coined by Wilde’s lover, the poet Lord Alfred Douglas. As it was, Wilde’s code was too easy to crack. In 1895 he was put on trial for indecency, and _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ was used as evidence against him. From one of the [trials](http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/wilde/Wildelibeltranowcross.html):

> Edward Carson, attorney: Then, I take it, that no matter how immoral a book may be, if it is well written, it is, in your opinion, a good book?  
>  Wilde: Yes, if it were well written so as to produce a sense of beauty, which is the highest sense of which a human being can be capable. If it were badly written, it would produce a sense of disgust.  
>  Carson: Then a well-written book putting forward perverted moral views may be a good book?  
>  Wilde: No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.  
>  Carson: A perverted novel might be a good book?  
>  Wilde: I don't know what you mean by a "perverted" novel.  
>  Carson: Then I will suggest Dorian Gray as open to the interpretation of being such a novel?

Here and elsewhere, Wilde disclaims any responsibility for the queer interpretation and interpretation in general, abdicating the role that Barthes would later wrest from all authors. Again, this may have been his genuine approach to writing, but it is impossible to divorce his words from the circumstances. Proudly claiming intent could have resulted in the literal death of the author. As it was, Wilde never recovered. He lost both of his trials, and after the latter was sentenced to two years of hard labor. Five years later he died, destitute. 

Wilde’s trial served as a reminder to writers that a story too easily interpreted as queer would be interpreted as queer, and that such stories would not go unpunished. It was a reminder surely noted by Wilde’s acquaintance and colleague Arthur Conan Doyle. The opening line from Doyle’s story _The Three Students_ [can be read](http://sherloki1854.tumblr.com/post/128934073105/where-holmes-and-watson-were-in-1895-hiding-from) as an oblique reference to the Wilde trials, from which many gay men in London were fleeing:

> It was in the year ‘95 that a combination of events, into which I need not enter, caused Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself to spend some weeks in one of our great University towns.

The line is, of course, only suggestive. Even with Eco’s guidance we cannot reject other readings. But we should never have expected to. The other readings exist as a smokescreen, a shield. Doyle could hardly make explicit reference to a man whose own references had been too explicit. The history of queer coding in narrative is one of deniability. Stories are constructed to allow for a queer reading, rather than to rule all non-queer readings out. The personal safety of the authors depended on it.

There are several different kinds of queer coding that have been used in Western literature over the last century or so. One of these codes is asexuality. While asexuality is unquestionably a valid sexual identity in its own right, it has also been used historically as a code for queer characters, just as celibacy has been pushed as a moral option for queer people.

In _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ , the title character is torn between the influences of artist Basil Hallward and sensualist Lord Henry, and his decision to follow Lord Henry rather than Basil leads to his downfall. Basil is portrayed as by far the most moral of the three, and unlike Henry and Dorian, he rejects sensualism. He is as enraptured by Dorian as Henry is, but insists on framing this attraction in a non-sexual way, as part of his work as an artist:

> [Lord Henry] “Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do you see him?"  
>  [Basil] "Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. He is absolutely necessary to me."  
>  "How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but your art."  
>  "He is all my art to me now," said the painter gravely.

Basil’s devotion to his art echoes the Sherlock Holmes of Doyle’s original stories, who also avoids relationships in favor of his life’s calling. In _The Sign of Four_ Holmes exclaims: “I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for?” 

EM Forster’s _Maurice_ was one of the first gay novels written, though it was not published for nearly sixty years, after Forster’s death in 1970. In _Maurice_ , the title character is again torn between two potential lovers, Clive and Alec. Like Basil Hallward, Clive refuses to engage in a sexual relationship, his three years with Maurice romantic but unconsummated. Later, Clive rejects Maurice and marries a woman:

> The actual deed of sex seemed to him unimaginative and best veiled in night. Between men it is inexcusable, between man and woman it may be practised since nature and society approve, but never discussed nor vaunted. His ideal of marriage was temperate and graceful, like his old ideals, and he found a fit helpmate in Anne, who had refinement herself, and admired it in others. (p. 144)

Forster, writing for himself alone, is able to give Maurice a happy ending: he moves on from Clive, embraces his desires, and begins a romantic and sexual relationship with Alec. In doing so, he rejects the premise that celibacy is the only moral option for queer people.

As we can see from Clive’s storyline, another form of coding is to put the queer character in a straight but passionless relationship, a sort of literary beard. This kind of coding can be found in _The Great Gatsby_. Narrator Nick Carraway has been [interpreted as gay](http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/05/-i-the-great-gatsby-i-movie-needed-to-be-more-gay/275768/) in modern times, despite his relationship with Jordan Baker, who may also [be read as queer](https://www.monmouth.edu/the_space_between/articles/MaggieFroehlick2010.pdf):

> Many critics have understood Nick’s use of conventionally masculine language to describe Jordan’s body (“hard,” “muscular,” that of “a young cadet”) and his admiration of her conventionally masculine attributes (she is athletic, confident, and “self-sufficient”) only in terms of his homosexuality, yet clearly there is evidence to suggest that Jordan has no erotic interest in men.

A third form of coding is the “monstrous” queer. In their essay [Ghost Stories are Gay Stories](http://heimishtheidealhusband.tumblr.com/post/132151884578/ghost-stories-are-gay-stories), [heimishtheidealhusband](http://heimishtheidealhusband.tumblr.com/) writes:

> This, my friends, is called homospectrality. This is a concept used to discuss queer subtextual narratives and metaphors in Victorian gothic literature. Here’s what the term means: the queer subtext of the story basically has its queerness represented in another creature or object outside of the queer character themselves, often times a monster, a creature, a ghost, or whatever the supernatural villain of the horror story is. This is an accurate reflection of the times in a lot of ways – it can represent repression, the death of an opportunity/love not taken, feeling ostracized from society, your subconscious coming to get you, and that unique experience anyone who has been closeted can appreciate of being simultaneously an outsider (the monster) and an insider (your public, heteronormative façade).

Often this villainous coding was combined with a fourth trope: the killing off of the queer person. This narrative punishment served to signal the author’s intentions, allowing mainstream readers to interpret the story as a grim morality tale. The queer character can be viewed as a human sacrifice by the queer author, whose own life and reputation is spared. 

These codes persist in modern culture. The “Bury Your Gays” trope in particular has received a great deal of attention lately with the killing off of yet another queer character on a popular TV show. Autostraddle now maintains a list of [“Every Regular or Recurring Lesbian or Bisexual Female Character Killed On Television”](http://www.autostraddle.com/all-65-dead-lesbian-and-bisexual-characters-on-tv-and-how-they-died-312315/), of which there are currently 160. [Further research on theirs](http://www.autostraddle.com/autostraddles-ultimate-infographic-guide-to-dead-lesbian-tv-characters-332920/) shows that queer women were three times more likely to die (31% of characters) than to have a happy ending (10%) of characters.

We cannot make a clean break with the past; we inherit past culture along with past texts. As Barthes wrote:

> We know that a text does not consist of a line of words [...] but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture.

And so it is not just Doyle who gives us Sherlock Holmes, but also Wilde, and the Marquess of Queensbury, and the spectators who drowned out Wilde’s responses with cries of “Shame!”, and the friends of Wilde’s who urged him to flee; the Breen office and the Motion Picture Production Code and those who did their best to subvert it; Forster and Prime-Stevenson and Renault and Vidal and the school librarians who chose to shelve their books or to ignore them; and the many thousands of fans and fan authors who have shared their interpretations and adaptations, not least of whom was Billy Wilder, director of the 1970 film _The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes_ , who [lamented](http://skulls-and-tea.tumblr.com/post/92670824071/i-should-have-been-more-daring-with-the-private):

> I should have been more daring [with The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes] but, unfortunately, the son of Conan Doyle was there. I wanted to make Holmes a homosexual. That’s why he is on dope. Look, we have been freed now from the Breen Office or the Johnston Office or that stupid thing. In many respects, it’s terrifying because now any idiot and any pornographer can do anything. But for the ones who are a little bit discriminating, who do it delicately, a grand new thing has opened. But that was after [I made] Private Life.

Mark Gatiss, co-creator of BBC Sherlock and a gay man himself, cites _The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes_ as [the film that changed his life](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/nov/07/mark-gatiss-sherlock-holmes):

> It's a fantastically melancholy film. The relationship between Sherlock and Watson is treated beautifully; Sherlock effectively falls in love with him in the film, but it's so desperately unspoken.

While many are used to viewing Gatiss as an Author of BBC Sherlock, his relationship to _Private Life_ and to the _Sherlock Holmes_ canon is primarily that of a fan, and a queer one at that. He recognizes the queer coding and uses it to shape his interpretation. This seems to have been tremendously important to him, as so many queer-coded texts have been to queer fans. And like many modern fans, he’s turned his interpretation into a fanwork.

BBC Sherlock is obviously a fanwork of _Sherlock Holmes_ , but it is also a fanwork of _Private Life_. Video meta creator [Rebekah](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKUQWjx8aGnCmXgfAlqiuMg/videos), in [her analysis of _A Scandal in Belgravia_](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKUQWjx8aGnCmXgfAlqiuMg/about), shows how this episode in particular is an adaptation of the film. When viewed in this context, we can see how BBC Sherlock is like so much of the work posted to fanfiction.net or Archive of Our Own: it takes a text which has been queer-coded due to cultural homophobia and uses the more tolerant culture of its time and/or medium to decode the text. Those fans aren’t “reading too much into things”. Like Gatiss, they are liberating a reading which has been in hiding.  
  


## Part 2: People Will Talk

The queerness of BBC Sherlock is highly contested, and no wonder - the show is crammed with about as much queer text and subtext as it is possible for a show to have while still allowing a straight reading. 

Many fans have documented the evidence in favor of a queer reading, and there is a lot of it1. Can we call it queer coding when Sherlock says girlfriends “aren’t really [his] area”, when John comments on Sherlock being “all mysterious with your cheekbones and turning your coat collar up so you look cool”, when John drunkenly places his hand on Sherlock’s knee and murmurs, “I don’t mind”? Or is that simply queer?

It may be queer, but it’s not simple, because the heteronormative reading is still the dominant reading. The text does support this reading as well, though more shakily. Sherlock never actively claims a queer identity and John, who dates several women and marries one, declares twice that he’s “not gay”. While most characters wonder whether Sherlock and John are dating, John himself at various points believes that Sherlock is in love with Irene Adler and dating Janine Hawkins. 

The tension between the two readings is remarkable, and each must contend with the plausibility of the other. If the characters are not queer, why is there so much queer text and subtext? If the characters are queer, why is there so little clarity about that? The creators are surely capable of making an explicitly queer show or a straightforwardly straight show, so why are they doing neither?

The tension is exemplified by a long-running phenomenon in the show: the assumptions and insinuations by various characters that John and Sherlock are dating. Although these moments are less common since John’s marriage, there are still so many examples from just ten episodes that I had to stick them all in a footnote2. Proponents of the straight reading pass them off as a joke, or as a nod to the long-running history of queer readings of the canon. Proponents of the queer reading see it as validation. Whichever interpretation you choose, one fact is undeniable: Gatiss and Moffat’s decision to include them in the text emphasizes its potential queerness. 

Similarly, there are several scenes in which John makes subtextual queerness text through nervous comments: “I’m glad no one saw that. You ripping my clothes off in a darkened swimming pool. People might talk.” ( _The Great Game_ ); “Take my hand!” “Now people will definitely talk.” ( _The Reichenbach Fall_ ); “Don’t know how those rumors started!” ( _The Sign of Three_ ). These moments encourage all readers to ask whether or not the text is queer. Those who choose the straight reading must do so actively; they are forced to consider the queer reading and discard it, rather than letting it pass by unseen.

Faced with such a contested text, some turn to authorial intention and cultural context to justify their interpretations. Those who accept the straight reading fall into two general camps. “It’s the 2010s,” the first camp says. “If they were gay, why wouldn’t they just… be gay?” The second camp is full of queer people and their allies, folks who ship Sherlock and John but simply don’t believe that the show itself does. “It’s the 2010s,” they say ruefully, “and writers are still afraid of gay stories.” 

The contradiction contained within these two explanations speaks to the liminal period that we’re in, as queer people enjoy increased acceptance both socially and legally while continuing to fight bigotry and violence in many forms. Art imitates life: we live in a time when it is possible both to create critically acclaimed and popular queer stories, and to fear damaging your career or your profits through queerness. How fans interpret texts too is changing. The queer coding which once represented the only way for queer writers and readers to share their stories is being [cast as “queerbaiting”](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Queer_baiting&oldid=724157988)3. What it means to be a queer person, a queer writer, a queer reader are in the process of being redefined.

Those who favor a queer reading of BBC Sherlock resurrect the Author as they discuss the various reasons why the production team would not queerbait. Gatiss [is a gay man](https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/life/21735/gt-icon-mark-gatiss/), they point out. Moffat has committed [two](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Madame_Vastra,_Jenny_Flint,_and_Strax&oldid=725103388#cite_note-16) [other](http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/jekyll/247931/how-moffat-s-jekyll-anticipated-doctor-who-sherlock) queer depictions of Holmes and Watson to film. BBC Sherlock was created shortly after the BBC [released a commissioned report](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-R0-ikRKha4VGc5TTM2LUdSVFE) in which they affirmed the importance of creating LGB content.

As convincing as these facts are, they don’t explain the show we’re seeing. If we believe that Moffat, Gatiss, and the BBC are all willing to tell a queer story then why isn’t it explicitly queer? Why is the straight reading the dominant reading?

The answer is that Gatiss and Moffat are not simply creating a queer version of Sherlock Holmes. They are instead creating a commentary on queerness, on queer coding, and on the changing perceptions of queerness in our time. To see how this is so, we shall have to go deep into the text.  
  


### Metafictionality in BBC Sherlock

BBC Sherlock is clearly conscious of its own nature as a story and a fanwork. In the first episode, during a showdown with a villain, Sherlock learns that a shadowy figure is orchestrating the crimes that he’s solving:

> SHERLOCK (frowning): Who’d sponsor a serial killer?  
>  JEFF (instantly): Who’d be a fan of Sherlock ’olmes?  
>  (They stare at each other for a moment.)  
>  JEFF: You’re not the only one to enjoy a good murder. There’s others out there just like you, except you’re just a man ... and they’re so much more than that.

Who’d be a fan of Sherlock Holmes? How about Mark Gatiss and co-creator Steven Moffat, the latter of whom wrote this script? With this line, they align both themselves and their audience with the malignant figure of Moriarty, all of whom “enjoy a good murder”. 

Moriarty is not just a fan, though - like Gatiss and Moffat, he’s a fan author. This is made clear in a later episode, _The Reichenbach Fall_ , where Moriarty takes on a false persona of a children’s tv show host named the Storyteller. In one scene, Sherlock watches on a taxi cab screen as Moriarty tells him “the story of Sir Boast-a-lot”, a thinly veiled Sherlock mirror who ends up exiled and disgraced. Then, in the climax where Moriarty lays out his ultimatum, Sherlock realizes that his friends will die “unless I kill myself - complete your story”.

Moriarty is a Fan, and Sherlock Holmes is the story he’s trying to reinterpret. He’s not content to keep his interpretation to himself. By forcing Sherlock to stage a public suicide, he changes how nearly everyone in-universe views Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock understands the importance of spreading the story, begging John: “I want you to tell Lestrade; I want you to tell Mrs Hudson, and Molly ... in fact, tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purpose."

Moriarty’s role is vital and metaphorically explicit, but he’s hardly the only Fan on the show. In _The Empty Hearse_ , the follow-up to _The Reichenbach Fall_ , we find that the minor recurring character of Anderson has created a club for fans to interpret The Fall. Two stories are told explaining how Sherlock might have escaped alive. These stories appear equivalent to the viewer, though Anderson favors his own version rather than Laura’s, a young woman whose story involves a stolen kiss between Sherlock and Moriarty:

> ANDERSON (horrified): What?! Are you out of your mind?!  
>  (He is standing and staring down at a dark-haired young woman sitting in his living room. She shrugs.)  
>  LAURA: I don’t see why not. It’s just as plausible as some of your theories.

But of course the most notable Fan character is John Watson. In the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories, Watson is not merely the first person narrator, but professes to be publishing his stories in The Strand Magazine - a real paper that many of Doyle’s stories were actually published in. In the BBC version of Sherlock Holmes, Watson’s magazine articles are replaced by John’s blog, which is the main source of Sherlock’s fame. Sherlock is often critical of John’s writing, calling it romanticized in _The Sign of Three_ and complaining on [the official blog](http://johnwatsonblog.co.uk/blog/28march), "I'm sorry, obviously I didn't realise I was a character in a children's story."

It is tempting to view John Watson as a symbolic stand in for Doyle, and indeed he may function that way at times, but as a character he does not _create_ the “text” of Sherlock Holmes. Instead, he shares his interpretation with the world. This makes him far more like a Fan author than like Doyle, and indeed John is Sherlock’s biggest fan. As Sherlock tells Irene Adler in _A Scandal in Belgravia_ : “Please don't feel obliged to tell me that was remarkable or amazing. John's expressed that thought in every possible variant available to the English language.”

John’s symbolic role as Fan is most clear in his response to Sherlock’s death in _The Reichenbach Fall_. At Sherlock’s grave, overcome with emotion, he pleads: “One more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don’t ... be ... dead. Would you do ...? Just for me, just stop it. Stop this.” Again, in the mini-episode _Many Happy Returns_ , to an old videotape of Sherlock: “I can tell you what you can do. You can stop being dead.” Finally, after Sherlock’s return in _The Empty Hearse_ , John tells him how he went to his grave and spoke to him: “I asked you for one more miracle. I asked you to stop being dead.” Sherlock’s response? “I heard you.”

This theme, repeated across three episodes, is a clear homage to the original fans of Doyle’s stories. When Doyle killed off Holmes in his short story _The Final Problem_ , he meant to do so for good, but the outcry from fans persuaded him to resurrect the character. BBC Sherlock’s John could have mourned in any number of ways. To have him say these words is to identify him with the very first fans of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

This symbolism makes John’s character an incredibly rich one. He acts as an individual, reading and interpreting Sherlock’s behavior for personal reasons. As Sherlock’s blogger, he shapes his public image, influencing how other people interpret the detective and and even how Sherlock understands himself. And symbolically, he stands in for all fans and fan authors. And what fans they are! Sherlock Holmes is the most adapted character in film & TV history, [according to the Guinness Book of World Records](http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2012/5/sherlock-holmes-awarded-title-for-most-portrayed-literary-human-character-in-film-tv-41743/), and one of the most adapted characters in any time or medium. If stories matter because they’re shared, then the Sherlock Holmes stories matter a great deal.

To return to John’s role: metaphorically speaking, John is the Fan and Sherlock the Text which he simultaneously reads and recreates. John is an attentive reader: “I always hear punch me when you’re speaking,” he says to Sherlock at one point, “but it’s usually subtext.” What other subtext does John pick up on? While Sherlock never responds to assumptions that he and John are dating, John nearly always does. It is always John who brings up that their actions may be read queerly, saying “people might talk”. He notices queer coding as well, and has an uncomfortable relationship with it. After reading about himself in the newspaper, he remarks: “Bachelor John Watson? ‘Bachelor’? What the hell are they implying?” In another scene, he objects to Sherlock labelling a character as gay based on how he presents himself: “Because he puts a bit of product in his hair?” John protests. “I put product in my hair.” 

Whether or not you read this as internalized homophobia, simple discomfort, or frustration with stereotyping - none of which are inconsistent with John being queer himself - these examples make clear that John is hyper-aware of queer readings. As our metafictional Fan-author, of course he is. He stands in for thousands of Sherlock Holmes fans as he thinks: _Is this queer? Do other people think it’s queer? Are they going to judge it for being queer? Are they going to judge me?_

This symbolism is rich, and there are many directions we can go with it. I have picked one particular direction for the rest of this essay, one possible interpretation - an interpretation that I believe explains why the queerness of BBC Sherlock is so contested and how that tension is in the process of being resolved.  
  


### Coding as Metaphor

If we view John and Sherlock not just as characters but also as metaphors, then their relationship becomes more than just that of friends and potential love interests - it becomes itself a metaphor. In particular, it becomes a metaphor for the history of queer coding and the need for society to simultaneously reclaim and move past it. Sherlock, our Text, has been queer coded and John, our Fan, must learn to read those codings for what they are and then reject them. Only then can the Fan be satisfied with the Text, and only then can Sherlock and John be truly happy together.

In the section on queer coding, we discussed four ways in which queer characters have historically been written: as asexual, as ambiguously straight, as monstrously gay, or as tragic figures who die by the end of their stories. We’ll consider each of these in turn.  
  


#### The Asexual Reading

Sherlock speaks very little about his sexual identity, seldom responding to assumptions of what it is or who he might be attracted to. Nearly everything we get from Sherlock directly about his preferences comes from a scene in the first episode where Sherlock and John have gone out to dinner:

> JOHN: You don’t have a girlfriend, then?  
>  SHERLOCK (still looking out of the window): Girlfriend? No, not really my area.  
>  JOHN: Mm. (A moment passes) Oh, right. D’you have a boyfriend? (Sherlock looks round at him sharply.) Which is fine, by the way.  
>  SHERLOCK: I know it’s fine.  
>  JOHN (smiling): So you’ve got a boyfriend then?  
>  SHERLOCK: No.  
>  JOHN (still smiling): Right. Okay. You’re unattached. Like me. (He looks down at his plate.) Fine. (He clears his throat.) Good.  
>  SHERLOCK (watches John for a moment, turns away, then turns back again): John, um ... I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work, and while I’m flattered by your interest, I’m really not looking for any ...  
>  JOHN (interrupting): No. (He turns his head briefly to clear his throat.) No, I’m not asking. No. I’m just saying, it’s all fine.  
>  SHERLOCK (looks at him for a moment, then nods): Good. Thank you.

Sherlock says that girlfriends are “not really [his] area” but about boyfriends says only that he doesn’t have one. From this John may conclude that Sherlock is gay but nothing is said explicitly. Conversely, “I consider myself married to my work” is a clear statement, and it drives the first of John’s readings of Sherlock. Like Basil Hallward or, indeed, like Arthur Conan Doyle’s original, BBC Sherlock’s Sherlock has subordinated any passion he might feel to his work. 

It’s worth reiterating that this asexual coding is not the same thing as lived asexuality, though there may be some overlap. The phrase “married to my work” doesn’t imply that Sherlock feels no attraction, only that he doesn’t plan to act on it. Nor does asexuality preclude romantic feelings, straight or queer. But in BBC Sherlock, these possibilities - asexuality, aromanticism, being married to your work - are conflated together along with a general repression of feeling, an iciness typified by Sherlock’s brother Mycroft.

Mycroft eschews personal connection, and Sherlock’s mirroring of Mycroft is made clearest in _A Scandal in Belgravia_ :

> Sherlock Holmes: Look at them. They all care so much. Do you ever wonder if there's something wrong with us?  
>  Mycroft Holmes: All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock.

Moriarty’s nicknames for Sherlock and Mycroft, shared by Irene at the end of the episode, encourage us to compare the two brothers: “Do you know what he calls you? The Ice Man and the Virgin.” In that same episode, Mycroft tells Sherlock: “Don’t be alarmed. It’s to do with sex.” When Sherlock replies “Sex doesn’t alarm me”, Mycroft responds with “How would you know?” In a later episode, Sherlock turns his words around. “I’m not lonely, Sherlock,” Mycroft protests. Sherlock answers: “How would you know?”

The brothers are compared again in The Abominable Bride, in a scene which takes place inside Sherlock’s mind palace/dream:

> WATSON (to Mycroft Holmes): Your heart ...  
>  HOLMES: No need to worry on that score, Watson.  
>  WATSON: No?  
>  HOLMES: There’s only a large cavity where that organ should reside.  
>  MYCROFT HOLMES: It’s a family trait.

While John’s reading of Sherlock is constantly fluctuating, he returns at several points to the asexual reading. In _The Blind Banker_ , he implies that Sherlock [doesn’t know what a date is](http://221bmeta.tumblr.com/post/104547220283/sherlock-thats-what-i-was-suggesting). In _The Sign of Three_ , he chides Sherlock for not assuming that a character was taking on the identities of dead men in order to get some action. “You’re missing the obvious, mate,” he says in the episode, and [in the corresponding blog post](http://www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk/blog/21july) writes:

> Because, sometimes, Sherlock Holmes can really miss the bloody obvious. I pointed out that it was just a tiny bit possible that possibly there was a man out there who just, possibly, maybe wanted a few one-night stands. I know, a shocking revelation. Case solved.4  
> 

Sherlock understands how John is reading him. "I imagine John Watson thinks love's a mystery to me," he says, out of nowhere, during his final confrontation with Irene in _A Scandal in Belgravia_ , and he's right. In a later scene John remarks, “[Sherlock]’s not like that. He doesn’t feel things that way. I don’t think.” It’s worth noting that he says this to Mycroft, Sherlock’s role model and mirror when it comes to feeling things. But Mycroft doesn’t agree with John, replying instead: “My brother has the brain of a scientist or a philosopher, yet he elects to be a detective. What might we deduce about his heart?” Mycroft knows that Sherlock is only pretending to be heartless, because he himself is only pretending to heartless. 

Yet John does not seem to grasp the subtleties of Mycroft’s statement. He still buys the asexual reading, confused though it is, just like many other fans still read Sherlock Holmes’ character as asexual.  
  


#### The Straight Reading

While John seems to favor the asexual reading of Sherlock, he also entertains a straight reading on several occasions. Unlike Watson, Holmes has no female love interests in the original stories. Irene Adler, the most popular love interest in fanworks, features in only a single short story in which she has no romantic relationship with Holmes whatsoever. In introducing Adler as a putative love interest in _A Scandal in Belgravia_ , Moffat and Gatiss are referencing the interpretations of fan authors, not the source text directly. As such, it’s fitting that Fan-author John seems much more concerned about Sherlock’s alleged relationship with Irene than Sherlock himself does.

Like Nick and Jordan from _The Great Gatsby_ , Sherlock and Irene are not a straight couple but rather a queer man and a queer woman whose relationship - romantic or otherwise - is being read as straight. Irene explicitly says that she’s gay, she has a female partner, Kate, and her sexual liaisons with a British princess help kick off the episode’s plot. It’s unclear whether she’s legitimately attracted to Sherlock or feigning attraction as a ruse, but she is definitely queer. The evidence for Sherlock’s attraction is even slimmer, as he does not respond to any of Irene’s advances.

Neither Sherlock nor Irene may believe in their romantic potential, but John does. When he catches Sherlock admiring Irene, he interrupts: “Hamish. John Hamish Watson, in case you're looking for baby names.” In his confrontation with Irene at Battersea, he implies that Sherlock has feelings for her:

> JOHN: You ... flirted with Sherlock Holmes?!  
>  IRENE (still looking at her phone): At him. He never replies.  
>  JOHN: No, Sherlock always replies – to everything. He’s Mr Punchline. He will outlive God trying to have the last word.  
>  IRENE: Does that make me special?  
>  JOHN: ... I don’t know. Maybe.  
>  IRENE: Are you jealous?

Sherlock later engages in a fake relationship with Janine Hawkins. Janine, who meets Sherlock as a bridesmaid at John’s wedding to Mary Morstan, seems to know that she has no chance with Sherlock, telling him quietly, “I wish you weren't…whatever it is you are.” A moment later, John comes into the room. Despite knowing Sherlock for so much longer than Janine, he fails to recognize what she does. He half-jokingly chides Sherlock: “Well, glad to see you've pulled, Sherlock, what with murderers running riot at my wedding.” While John in the next episode is shocked and dazed by Sherlock and Janine’s apparent relationship, he accepts it, and seems surprised again later when he discovers that Sherlock had been faking it for a case.

Interestingly, Janine goes on to “sell her story” to the tabloids, claiming that she and Sherlock had a wild sexual relationship. Although it’s doubtful that John himself believes the tabloids, there are many in-universe fans who likely do, and they are mirrors for John, who _did_ read the relationship as sexual at the start of the episode.

Just as John fails to reject the asexual reading, he fails to reject the straight one. So it goes with many of the real life fans of BBC Sherlock.  
  


#### The Monstrous Reading

A third reading of Sherlock is that of the villainous or monstrous gay character. Unlike the previous two readings, which have some basis in canon or in previous well-known adaptations, this is a theme that Moffat and Gatiss are introducing. While John mostly rejects this coding - he would not be much of a friend otherwise - there are moments in the show where he seems to buy into it.

As with Mycroft and the asexual reading, and Irene and the straight reading, there is a single character who embodies the monstrous reading: James Moriarty. Moriarty is without a doubt monstrous. He is introduced in the show as the sponsor of serial killers and in _The Great Game_ , the episode where we meet him in person, he bombs in apartment building and threatens a child.

He is also gay. When we first see him in _The Great Game_ he is pretending to date Molly, but Sherlock deduces that he’s gay from his personal grooming habits and the fact that he’s left Sherlock his number. Moriarty later claims that he was “playing gay” but his obsession with Sherlock is easy to read as partly sexual, and he uses suggestive language, asking, “Is that a British Army Browning L9A1 in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?” Fan author Laura in _The Empty Hearse_ reads Moriarty as gay, imagining a kiss with Sherlock, and Sherlock himself portrays Moriarty as queer in his drug-induced dream in _The Abominable Bride_. In one memorable scene, Moriarty fellates a loaded weapon until it goes off, literally “blowing his brains out”. (This is a brilliant play on the French phrase _la petite mort_ , “the little death”, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “the sensation of orgasm as likened to death”.)

While Moriarty is the focal point for much of the monstrous coding, he is not the only source of it. Before Sherlock ever meets Moriarty, he identifies himself as “a high functioning sociopath”. While sociopathy is a personality disorder and does not inherently make one a villain or a monster, the term definitely has dark connotations. John never calls Sherlock a sociopath, though he does at one point ask “Is everyone I've ever met a psychopath?”, and he does criticize Sherlock for lack of empathy. In _The Reichenbach Fall_ he calls Sherlock “You machine!” when he pretends not to care that Mrs. Hudson has been shot.

This ‘heartlessness’ can bleed over into the asexual reading - which, symbolized by Mycroft, includes a repression of all forms of caring - so it’s worth pointing out that when John implies Sherlock is monstrous he often links it to romantic relationships. In _His Last Vow_ , after his wife is revealed as an assassin and the person who nearly killed Sherlock, he tells Sherlock: “Look at you two, you should have gotten married”, a sarcastic statement that manages to invoke both the straight reading and the monstrous reading but not the asexual one. The most relevant conversation happens in _The Great Game_ , however:

> JOHN: So why’s [Moriarty] doing this, then – playing this game with you? D’you think he wants to be caught?  
>  SHERLOCK (smiles slightly): I think he wants to be distracted.  
>  JOHN: **I hope you’ll be very happy together.**  
>  SHERLOCK: Sorry, what?  
>  JOHN (turns back angrily): There are lives at stake, Sherlock – actual human lives... Just – just so I know, do you care about that at all?  
>  SHERLOCK (irritably): Will caring about them help save them?  
>  JOHN: Nope.  
>  SHERLOCK: Then I’ll continue not to make that mistake.  
>  JOHN: And you find that easy, do you?  
>  SHERLOCK: Yes, very. Is that news to you?  
>  JOHN: No. (He smiles bitterly.) No.

Although John does sometimes buy into the monstrous reading, it's Sherlock himself who seems to be stuck on it. This is emphasized by a mind palace scene in _His Last Vow_ where we see that he keeps a symbolic Moriarty chained and locked in a padded room in the deepest depths of his psyche. In _The Abominable Bride_ Moriarty breaks out and wreaks havoc, ending up alone with Sherlock on the Reichenbach waterfall. He delivers the following speech as he and Sherlock attempt to push each other off the falls:

> Oh, you think you’re so big and strong, Sherlock! Not with me! I am your weakness! I keep you down! Every time you stumble, every time you fail, when you’re weak I am there! No. Don’t try to fight it. Lie back and lose! (Moriarty gains the advantages, bending Sherlock over the side of the ledge.) Shall we go over together? It has to be together, doesn’t it? At the end, it’s always just you and me!

Remember, this is Sherlock’s mental representation of Moriarty speaking. If any text begs us to interpret symbolically, it’s this one. Throughout the show, Moriarty has been portrayed as a monstrous version of Sherlock, a gay man with the villainous queer coding dialled up to eleven. Sherlock fears that, like Moriarty, he will always be seen as monstrous.

I previously mentioned heimishtheidealhusband's meta [Ghost Stories are Gay Stories](http://heimishtheidealhusband.tumblr.com/post/132151884578/ghost-stories-are-gay-stories) when defining monstrous queer coding. This meta is not only an excellent introduction to such coding, it's a brilliant analysis of how it's used in BBC Sherlock and in _The Hound of Baskerville_ in particular:

> Here’s why BBC Sherlock’s treatment of Hound is particularly beautiful. The creature – the hound – is our queer monster. In ACD’s Hound, the hound was indeed physically altered – he was painted in phosphorous to give him a hellish, glowing appearance. And the hound was actually the one to do the killing. In BBC’s Hound, there’s “the hound” – the monster that everyone is afraid of which is actually imaginary, and “the dog” – the real thing that actually exists. In other words, in this version, the “queer creature” in the horror story has been de-monstered. Homospectrality is being flipped on his head – rather than separating the man from the queer, they’re separating the queer from the monster. Because the dog isn’t inherently evil, it’s just the poison in the air that everyone is breathing that makes them fear it, and see a monster instead of an innocent dog. So in this treatment, if the dog/hound represents queerness, heteronormativity becomes a poisonous element in the air we all breathe. (A brief pause while your narrator freaks out about the beauty of this metaphor. Okay.)

I have very little to add to this argument, except to recast it in the language I've been using: the dog represents queerness, the poison homophobia, and the glowing evil hound the monstrously coded queer. Note also that in the climactic scene, while others see a monstrously coded dog, Sherlock sees Moriarty.

Heimishtheidealhusband also reminds us:

> Sherlock takes the case because of Henry’s use of antiquated language to describe the dog. In other words, his outdated views of queerness, thanks to the influence of the poison.

It is this poison which causes Sherlock to run from his own feelings, and for the fans and John to read Sherlock as heartless.

  


#### Bury Your Gays

While Sherlock’s fake death is a well known part of canon, and was written not to punish his queerness but because Arthur Conan Doyle was tired of the character, the creators of BBC Sherlock do a few things to strengthen its relationship to that trope.

First, rather than being wrestled off a waterfall, Sherlock is coerced by Moriarty to commit suicide:

> JIM: Your only three friends in the world will die ... unless ...  
>  SHERLOCK: ... unless I kill myself – complete your story.  
>  JIM: You’ve gotta admit that’s sexier.  
>  SHERLOCK (his gaze distant and lost): And I die in disgrace.  
>  JIM (in a matter-of-fact tone): Of course. That’s the point of this.

The story of a queer person committing suicide because they’ve been shamed and rejected by their community is heartbreakingly familiar.

Second, the episode in which this happens, _The Reichenbach Fall_ , contains a courtroom scene which evokes the trial of Oscar Wilde. Rebekah explains this in detail in her video Sherlock Holmes & Oscar Wilde, drawing extensively on analysis by [Bronte](http://vauxhallandi.tumblr.com/), [Fox](http://jamesrkirk.tumblr.com/), and [Gabe](http://wimpytentacle.co.vu/). Remember that Wilde is the most prominent example of an author shamed for being gay, a circumstance which led to his death. _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ , the novel which was used to condemn him, follows a queer-coded character who kills himself at the end of the story.

Finally, Sherlock’s fake death is mirrored by Irene Adler’s in an earlier episode. Irene, who is explicitly gay, fakes her death to avoid persecution from an unknown enemy (Moriarty, perhaps?). She then does nearly die in Karachi but is saved by Sherlock. Like Irene, Sherlock fakes his death and then has a near death experience, when he is shot by Mary Morstan. In both cases, the “bury your gays” trope is subverted. Irene is saved by another queer person, and it is Sherlock’s relationship with John which saves him from death, rather than being the thing for which he is punished by death.

## Part 3: Rejecting Queer Coding

Just as John’s perceptions of Sherlock as asexual, straight, and monstrous negatively influence his relationship with Sherlock, the faked death has a significant and negative impact. And just as Sherlock is not really asexual, straight or monstrously queer, he is not really dead. 

Series 1 and 2, told from John’s point of view, introduce and in some ways validate these queer codings of Sherlock. In Series 3, the first from Sherlock’s own point of view, we see Sherlock rejecting each of the codings in turn. In _The Empty Hearse_ , he owns up to his faked death, telling John: “Short version… not dead.” In _The Sign of Three_ , he tells the symbolic Irene who inhabits his mind palace, “Get of my head, I’m busy.” A few minutes later he does the same to mind palace Mycroft, slapping himself as he shouts: “No! No! Not you! Not you!” And at the end of _The Abominable Bride_ , Sherlock watches approvingly as mind palace John kicks mind palace Moriarty off of a waterfall. 

But - excepting Sherlock’s return from the dead - these are all internal moments. Although John is the impetus for the change, he has no way of knowing it has occurred until Sherlock communicates it. And so Series 4 will be the final part of the metaphorical arc. Our symbolic Fan will reject coding and obfuscation in favor of seeing the Text as it really is: a queer love story. Only then will John be able to enter into a happy and functional relationship with Sherlock, and only then will fans be able to truly embrace BBC Sherlock and the original Sherlock Holmes canon.

 _The Abominable Bride_ , a special episode set inside Sherlock’s own mind and placed between Series 3 and 4, is a key episode for navigating this transition, and so we’ll take a closer look at it.  
  


### Subtext Made Text in The Abominable Bride

No one knows exactly which scenes in _The Abominable Bride_ “really” happened. Even the most basic premise - that the episode was largely a drug-induced dream sequence occurring after Sherlock boarded a plane bound for exile - is contested by some. I am not going to get into that debate, as I’m mostly concerned with scenes that are clearly a dream. The one exception is the first “modern day” scene, where this exchange occurs:

> MARY: You’ve been reading John’s blog – the story of how you met.  
>  SHERLOCK (nodding): Helps me if I see myself through his eyes sometimes. I’m so much cleverer.

Whether or not this scene is real, I choose to believe both statements - that Sherlock really did read John’s story of the day they met before succumbing to the drugs, and that he did it because it makes him feel better, if not for precisely the reasons he gives. There’s no particular reason for Sherlock’s mind to invent this detail, and the episode does begin with a Victorian retelling of Sherlock and John’s first meeting.

Accepting this premise helps us frame the episode. Sherlock is trying to see himself through John’s eyes. His dream sequence is _narrated by John_. He is not creating his own self-image, but shaping himself to fit how he thinks John thinks of him. It's a beautiful metaphor for reading texts but a horribly vulnerable way to live. No wonder he's struggling. In a brief scene in _The Empty Hearse_ , [gif'd here by sannapersikka](http://sannapersikka.tumblr.com/post/148833752460), we saw Sherlock viciously and compulsively criticize himself using John's words. We'll see the same thing happen in _The Abominable Bride_.

I’m going to focus on the scenes where John’s metaphorical role is commented on directly, and I’m going to take them in the order they appear in the episode. For clarity’s sake, I’ll be referring to the characters as Holmes and Watson when talking about the surface reading of the story, Sherlock and John when talking about their ‘real’ or ‘modern’ counterparts, and Text and Fan when referring to them on a metaphorical level. They frequently occupy multiple roles at once, though, so it’s still bound to be a bit confusing.

The first two scenes in the episode after the intro montage and after Holmes and Watson meet highlight that Watson is Holmes’s biographer. First, we see Watson stop the carriage to talk to the news vendor who’s been selling his stories:

> WATSON: How’s ‘The Blue Carbuncle’ doing?  
>  NEWS VENDOR: Very popular, Doctor Watson. Is there gonna be a proper murder next time?  
>  WATSON: I’ll have a word with the criminal classes.

This is a joke, but also a callback to the “Who’d sponsor a serial killer?”/“Who’d be a fan of Sherlock Holmes?” scene from the first episode. Fans do love their proper murders. Moving on, we see Holmes and Watson returning to Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson immediately launches into a complaint about Watson’s stories, critiquing them as a distortion of reality:

> MRS HUDSON: Well, I never say anything, do I? According to you, I just show people up the stairs and serve you breakfasts.  
>  WATSON: Well, within the narrative, that is – broadly speaking – your function.  
>  MRS HUDSON: My what?!  
>  HOLMES: Don’t feel singled out, Mrs Hudson. I’m hardly in the dog one.  
>  WATSON (indignantly): “The dog one”?!  
>  MRS HUDSON: I’m your landlady, not a plot device.  
>  WATSON: Do you mean ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’?!  
>  MRS HUDSON (upset): And you make the room so drab and dingy.  
>  WATSON (tetchily): Oh, blame it on the illustrator. He’s out of control. I’ve had to grow this moustache just so people’ll recognise me.

There’s a lot packed into this short scene. We see that Watson is an unreliable narrator: his characterization of Mrs. Hudson is not true to how she sees herself. We’ll come to see how his characterization of Holmes is also off. Even Watson has had to change to fit his stories, though he blames the illustrator for it. Similarly, John’s perceptions of Sherlock and of himself are inaccurate, and the Fan is misinterpreting the Text.

Watson’s stories are mentioned again briefly during the conversation with Hooper in the morgue:

> HOOPER: There are two ‘features of interest,’ as you are always saying in Doctor Watson’s stories.  
>  HOLMES: I never say that.  
>  WATSON: You do, actually, quite a lot.

This is the first suggestion that Watson’s characterization of Holmes specifically is off - but it won’t be the last. Next, we have this argument between Watson and his maid:

> WATSON (snatching the telegram from her): What have you been doing all morning?  
>  JANE: Reading your new one in The Strand, sir.  
>  WATSON: Did you enjoy it?  
>  JANE: Why do you never mention me, sir?  
>  WATSON: Go away.

Again, we see a female character complain that they are excluded from Watson’s stories. One of the themes of _The Abominable Bride_ is the marginalization and oppression of women: in society, in the original Sherlock Holmes stories, and in the mind of BBC Sherlock's Sherlock. This is used by Moffat and Gatiss as a mirror for the show's overall theme of the marginalization and oppression of queer people, but it's a poor choice of mirror - not because misogyny and homophobia are so different, but because they're too similar. The writers have shown us how storytellers can unintentionally perpetuate homophobia when they don't put effort and empathy into understanding the history of LGBQ people. Like most shows, BBC Sherlock perpetuates several kinds of oppression 5, and using one of these as a fairly glib metaphor unsurprisingly [offended some viewers](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/sherlock-sexism-row-abominable-bride-writers-castigated-misogynist-plotline-1535789).

Moving on: when Holmes and Watson go to see Mycroft, they stop first to have a sign language conversation with a man named Wilder, who compliments Watson on his most recent story. [Some have suggested](http://rusty-armour.livejournal.com/147452.html) that this is an homage to Billy Wilder, director of _The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes_. Holmes communicates with Wilder perfectly, but Watson struggles. The Fan is not ready to appreciate Wilder’s words, i.e. his queer-coded interpretation:

> WILDER, signing: Ah Yes! Dr Watson, of course. Enjoyed ‘The Blue Carbuncle’, sir.  
>  WATSON: Thank you. I...am...glad...you...liked it. You are very...ugly.  
>  (HOLMES does a double-take in his direction, and WILDER frowns and signs:) I beg your pardon?  
>  WATSON: Ugly. What you said about ‘The Blue Fishmonger’. Very ugly...

The next scene of interest happens some time later, as Holmes and Watson head to the Carmichaels'. Watson suggests that the murderer might be a ghost, and Holmes responds:

> HOLMES: Since when have you had any kind of imagination?  
>  WATSON: Perhaps since I convinced the reading public that an unprincipled drug addict is some kind of gentleman hero.  
>  HOLMES: Yes, now you come to mention it, that was quite impressive.

Watson’s stories are inaccurate, and they’re inaccurate on purpose - because the reading public would be disgusted if they knew how Holmes really is. Here addiction takes the place of queerness, which the show cannot directly comment upon. (It’s an uneasy substitution, as queerness is not harmful like addiction is, although Victorians would have seen it as such.) Sherlock fears that John knows his “true” queer identity but is refusing to mention it because he’s disgusted by it. The Fan is continuing the queer coding because they are afraid of the explicitly queer.

We come now to one of the richest scenes in the episode: the greenhouse scene. Watson and Holmes are hiding out, waiting for Carmichael to be attacked. Eventually, Watson brings the conversation around to Holmes’ sexuality, much to Holmes’ distress:

> WATSON: Why do you need to be alone?  
>  HOLMES: If you are referring to romantic entanglement, Watson – which I rather fear you are – as I have often explained before, all emotion is abhorrent to me. It is the grit in a sensitive instrument ...  
>  HOLMES and WATSON (almost simultaneously): ... the crack in the lens.  
>  WATSON: Yes.  
>  HOLMES: Well, there you are, you see? I’ve said it all before.  
>  WATSON: No, I wrote all that. You’re quoting yourself from The Strand Magazine.  
>  HOLMES: Well, exactly.  
>  WATSON: No, those are my words, not yours! That is the version of you that I present to the public: the brain without a heart; the calculating machine. I write all of that, Holmes, and the readers lap it up, but I do not believe it.

We learn here that Watson’s portrayal of Holmes as asexual and heartless has changed Holmes so much that Watson is literally putting words in his mouth. What’s more, we see that Watson is aware of it: he recognizes not just the inaccuracies in his stories but their negative impact on Holmes. He knows that others love this portrayal but he does not. He prefers to understand who Holmes really is.

Translating this surface narrative to our two other levels, we get a more hopeful message. John has realized that Sherlock is changing himself to match John's stated expectations, and he doesn't want that - he wants to know the real Sherlock. The Fan knows that their perpetuation of queer coding has changed the way the Text is read, but realizes that there’s something important that they’re missing, something better. Other fans may embrace queer coding, but the Fan wants to understand what the coding was hiding - what the Text really says.

There’s another brief reference to Watson’s stories in the confrontation scene between Holmes and Moriarty:

> MORIARTY: I like your rooms. They smell so… manly.  
>  HOLMES: I’m sure you’ve acquainted yourself with them before now.  
>  MORIARTY: Well, you are always away on your little adventures for The Strand. Tell me: does the illustrator travel with you? Do you have to pose during your deductions?  
>  HOLMES: I’m aware of all six occasions you have visited these apartments during my absence.

Why does Moriarty care so much about Watson’s stories? Perhaps he’s jealous of Watson’s official role as Holmes’ storyteller. And perhaps we’re meant to read the line metaphorically: that the Watson’s queer coding has made Holmes vulnerable to invasion by the monstrous Moriarty. The Fan has embraced queer coding so wholeheartedly that the Text is in danger of being destroyed by it.

This brings us to the first modern day scene, which is arguably real. It’s this scene which lets us know that Sherlock was reading John’s blog after he boarded the plane. There are no other references to John’s role as writer, and Sherlock soon slips back under, awaking again in 1895. There he finds Watson furious at him for taking drugs:

> WATSON (pointing to the syringe): Never on a case. You promised me. Never on a case.  
>  HOLMES: No, I just said that in one of your stories. (He smiles.)  
>  WATSON: Listen. I’m happy to play the fool for you. I will run along behind you like some halfwit, making you look clever, if that’s what you need, but dear God above, you will hold yourself to a higher standard.  
>  HOLMES: Why?  
>  WATSON: Because people need you to.  
>  HOLMES: What people? Why? Because of your idiot stories?  
>  WATSON: Yes, because of my idiot stories.

This conversation has echoes of many of the previous ones. It reminds us of Watson calling Holmes an “unprincipled drug addict”, and of the scene in the greenhouse where Watson called Holmes out on quoting himself from the Strand. In this case, it’s Watson mistaking his words for Holmes’. 

The key to this scene in Watson’s last line: “Yes, because of my idiot stories.” It’s been established already that Watson is lying in his stories and that the readers still love them, so why do people need the private Sherlock Holmes to live up to a higher standard? Why, unless Watson is tired of lying?

There’s a bit of a bait and switch here. You could read Watson as saying, “Just behave according to your queer coding!” but time has passed in the episode, and the modern world with its increased acceptance of queerness is beginning to bleed into the Victorian one. Addiction is no longer a socially acceptable metaphor for homosexuality - instead, it’s a better metaphor for internalized homophobia. Watson is tired of lying because he doesn’t need to anymore. The Fan is ready to read, and to tell, a queer story.

This and the next several scenes are characterized by Watson/John’s anger at Sherlock. It’s misleading, because Sherlock has correctly deduced John’s anger, yet he misdiagnoses the cause of it. At this point, he still fears two contradictory things: that John believes him heartless, and that John recognizes Sherlock’s heart, his queer love for John, and rejects it. Hence when modern John breaks into the Victorian era, it’s to shout in a wildly out of character way: “Sherlock, tell me where my bloody wife is, you pompous prick, or I’ll punch your lights out!”

But John’s not angry about Sherlock’s queerness. He’s upset at how Sherlock has lied and manipulated him, avoiding an emotionally honest and therefore queer relationship with him. He goes along with Sherlock - he will “play the fool for [him]... if that’s what [he] need[s]” - but it’s killing him, and he can’t help but lash out. If only Sherlock could hold himself to a higher standard and be honest about how he feels.

The Fan recognizes the queer coding for what it is, and sees how damaging it has become, how it obscures a far better story: an explicitly queer story. The Fan is rightfully angry at being denied the explicitly queer Text, and demands that the Text be held to a higher standard.

We arrive at last at the falls of the Reichenbach and the climax of the episode. Sherlock - not Holmes anymore, for he’s aware that he’s dreaming - faces down Moriarty. Moriarty has come to represent all queer coding, not just the monstrous, for both Sherlock and John, Fan and Text, have come to see all queer coding as monstrous. Moriarty wrestles Sherlock, threatening him again with a fall to his death, as he yells: “Shall we go over together? It has to be together, doesn’t it? At the end, it’s always just you ... AND ME!” It’s at this moment that John/Watson appears:

> (Behind them, a very familiar male voice clears its throat. Moriarty looks round and a few feet away Watson, smiling slightly, lifts his revolver with the muzzle pointed skywards and cocks it before pointing it forward.)  
>  WATSON: Professor, if you wouldn’t mind stepping away from my friend. I do believe he finds your attention a shade annoying.  
>  MORIARTY: That’s not fair. There’s two of you!  
>  WATSON: There’s always two of us. Don’t you read The Strand?

It's crucial here that Watson invoke his role as storyteller. This is the Fan reclaiming their power of interpretation and rejecting the poisonous effects of queer coding. “I’m a storyteller,” Watson says confidently, a few lines later, taking from Moriarty the title which he claimed in _The Reichenbach Fall_. 

The pair subdue Moriarty. Then:

> HOLMES: Thank you, John.  
>  WATSON: Since when do you call me John?  
>  HOLMES: You’d be surprised. (He smiles.)  
>  WATSON: No I wouldn’t. Time you woke up, Sherlock.  
>  (He raises his gaze to Holmes again, who had been looking away but now turns to look at him.)  
>  WATSON: I’m a storyteller. I know when I’m in one.  
>  HOLMES: Of course. Of course you do, John. (He smiles again.)

He is John and Watson both at once now, and the Fan too, self-consciously existing on multiple levels, just as Sherlock/Holmes/the Text is. Then Moriarty speaks:

> MORIARTY: Urgh. Why don’t you two just elope, for God’s sake?  
>  WATSON: Impertinent!  
>  HOLMES: Offensive.

This is, interestingly enough, the first time that any Moriarty - living or mind palace - directly says that John and Sherlock are queer and attracted to each other. For all that he recognizes Sherlock’s love for John and uses it against him, he never explicitly says that it’s a queer love. Given how frequently other characters make these kind of remarks, it’s noteworthy that Moriarty waits until now.

There’s another first here: this is the first time that Sherlock has replied directly to an insinuation that he is queer, or that he and John are or ought to be together. Again, given how frequently other characters make these remarks, it’s noteworthy that Sherlock doesn’t respond until now.

And what does he say? He calls it “offensive”. He’s not referring to the idea that he’s queer or that he and John ought to be together, because that’s never provoked him to respond before. It’s those words coming from Moriarty’s mouth: Moriarty, who has done so much to separate him from John; Moriarty, who represents queer coding in general, and also the most poisonous kind, monstrous coding. Here on the falls of the Reichenbach the queer Fan has reclaimed their Text, and queer coding can be nothing more than queerbaiting. It becomes, in a word, offensive.

Watson kicks Moriarty off the cliff, symbolizing both the Fan’s victory over queer coding and Sherlock’s willingness to admit his love for John. He then asks how Sherlock plans to wake up. Sherlock responds by taking his deerstalker - [a metaphor for his queer coded public image](http://inevitably-johnlocked.tumblr.com/post/138233820235/youre-sherlock-holmes-wear-the-damn-hat) \- and throws it off the cliff. The metafictional arc is complete.

But alas, it’s only a dream. We must wait for Series 4 to see this all play out in “real life”.  
  


## Epilogue: Ghosts

The metaphor of John as Fan and Sherlock as Text works on both an intimate and political level. Indeed, the resonance between the intimate and the political only makes each more powerful.

On an intimate level, Sherlock and John’s relationship is stalled by John’s misreading of Sherlock. They can’t have a happy or healthy relationship while John is mischaracterizing Sherlock so completely. Here, the metaphor highlights how queer coding limits our ability to recognize queer love - as wholesome, as worth celebrating, or even at all.

It also shows how queer coding can damage self-image. I’ve talked at length about how Sherlock's poor self-image, but what about John? There’s textual evidence that John is attracted to three different men6, including Sherlock, but he never uses the word ‘bisexual’ to describe himself. Few television characters do: even within LGBQ media, [bisexual representation is rare](https://bisexual.org/bisexuality-in-the-media-where-are-the-bisexuals-on-tv/). Perhaps John has not seen enough stories in which he can recognize himself7. When Irene Adler compares herself to John, providing herself as an example of a gay woman nevertheless attracted to a man, he does not reject the comparison but falls silent, considering.

On the political level, the suppression of queer stories has delayed the acceptance of queerness in our culture. US Vice President Joe Biden endorsed gay marriage in 2012, [saying](http://www.salon.com/2013/03/30/did_tv_change_americas_mind_on_gay_marriage/): “When things really began to change is when the social culture changes. I think Will & Grace probably did more to educate the American public than almost anybody’s ever done so far.” In 1993, Jan Breslauer [lamented](http://articles.latimes.com/1993-12-26/entertainment/ca-5542_1_dozen-years):

> And so it is that 1993 has been a year of dark conquest. The [AIDS] plague has reached a new level of visibility--with Tony Kushner's Pulitzer-winning "Angels in America" on Broadway, HBO's "And the Band Played On" and the just-opened film "Philadelphia." Yet these works also stand as painful reminders of how little has been done to stop the death march, now more than a dozen years into the epidemic.

What might we have achieved if these stories had been shared sooner? Breslauer continues:

> While these works should help dispel the notion that AIDS affects only gays, they could, simply by virtue of the increased number of portrayals of gay characters, begin to mitigate entrenched cultural homophobia. In that way, the personal journey of the lawyer played by Washington in "Philadelphia," who comes to deal with his own attitude toward gays by virtue of his relationship with the Hanks character, may stand for the symbolic experience of the American public in 1993. 

The power of stories to effect political change is impossible to quantify, but also impossible to ignore. And just as the personal is political, so too can the political be quite personal. Sherlock and John would have [come of age](http://thenorwoodbuilder.tumblr.com/post/34220341442/sherli-holmes-how-old-are-sherlock-and-john-for) in the late eighties and nineties, in the middle of the AIDS epidemic and amidst considerable homophobia. Would that not shape them? 

“We all have a past,” Sherlock tells John in _The Abominable Bride_. “Ghosts - they are the shadows that define our every sunny day.”

BBC Sherlock forces us to acknowledge our ghosts. If Sherlock and John had been written as gay from the beginning8, it would have been lovely, but it would have been simply “the gay Sherlock Holmes”. But Sherlock Holmes has always been gay, and the way it and so many other queer stories have been hidden by queer coding is a shadow defining these sunnier days. The writers push the viewer to actively participate in the process of queer coding. As John comes to reinterpret Sherlock, so too will fans will be forced to reinterpret BBC Sherlock. In doing so, they will learn to recognize queer coding and to confront its harmful legacy.

 _The Blind Banker_ , BBC Sherlock’s second episode, revolves around a cipher hidden in a book - a book with significant impact, “a book that everybody would own”9. Sherlock is able to break the code and read the hidden message in the book, saving John and his date Sarah from danger, yet the kidnappers get away. John suggests that they can be brought to justice, but Sherlock knows better than that:

> SHERLOCK: No. No. I cracked this code; all the smugglers have to do is pick up another book.

As impactful as Arthur Conan Doyle’s works have been, they are not the only queer coded texts out there, the only stories ready to be reclaimed. Nor are queer people the only group that have been marginalized, forced to obscure their truths in order to be published. We cannot stop at the Sherlock Holmes stories, though we can certainly pause to celebrate.

Just as John Watson is learning to tell better stories, so too can we fans -- and we must. As I said at the beginning: fans are part of a community. Fans believe stories matter. And so fans have a collective obligation to tell inclusive and honest stories, to transform the works we’re given into something more, not less. To decode, to transgress, to reclaim, and maybe one day to lay our ghosts to rest.

 

Footnotes

1: Try these metas for starters: 

  * Loudest Subtext in Television’s _[A Deception So Audacious](http://beejohnlocked.tumblr.com/post/123897538221/a-deception-so-audacious-subtitle-redacted)_ (warning: lengthy)
  * Loudest Subtext in Television’s _[Top Three Reasons Johnlock Will Be Canon](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-R0-ikRKha4YzVNc2hscnJRbjg?tid=0B-R0-ikRKha4Si1rUnF6WHBmRG8)_
  * Xistentialangst’s _[Love and Breadcrumbs](http://xistentialangst.tumblr.com/post/72985019679/love-and-breadcrumbs-the-relationship-development)_
  * Inevitably-Johnlocked's _[TJLC Meta - A Beginner’s Guide](http://inevitably-johnlocked.tumblr.com/post/137192971055/tjlc-meta-a-beginners-guide)_



Or, if gif/picture metas are more your speed: 

  * Mrs Ashdown’s post on the _[Vitruvian John” collage](http://mrsashdown.tumblr.com/post/74274076746/as-i-was-browsing-through-screen-caps-of-the-sign)_
  * DeducingBBCSherlock’s _[The Most Homoerotic Transition in Television History](http://deducingbbcsherlock.tumblr.com/post/78162645535/i-see-what-they-did-there)_



2: Mrs. Hudson assumes that they’re dating several times over the course of the show, starting with her statement that “there’s a bedroom upstairs, if you’ll be needing two”; Mycroft asks “might we expect a happy announcement by the end of the week?”; Angelo offers anything on the menu gratis “for you and for your date”; Sally Donovan remarks that "Opposites attract, I suppose"; Irene Adler, who knows what people like, says “somebody loves you” to Sherlock about John and later tells John, when he claims he and Sherlock are not a couple, “yes you are”; John’s girlfriend Jeanette, when breaking up with him, tells him, “You’re a great boyfriend, and Sherlock Holmes is a very lucky man”; the gay innkeepers in The Hound of Baskerville apologize for not having a shared bed for them, and ask John if “yours is a snorer”; reporter Kitty Reilly interrogates Sherlock: “You and John Watson, just platonic? Can we put down for a "no" there as well?”; in The Hound of Baskerville again Doctor Frankland convinces Louise Mortimer that John (who is trying to chat her up) is gay by referring to him as Sherlock’s “live-in PA”; Mary remarks on John shaving after Sherlock disparaged his moustache: “six months of bristly kisses for me, and then His Nibbs turns up”, and later tells Sherlock, in reference to an old friend and potential lover of John’s “neither of us were the first, you know”; Moriarty is most explicit in his implications when he’s a figment of Sherlock’s imagination, saying in The Abominable Bride: “Why don't you two just elope for god's sake”; Magnussen tells Sherlock: “But look how you care about John Watson. Your damsel in distress.” On John’s blog, the second comment to his entry about meeting Sherlock for the first time, from his old friend Bill Murray, reads in its entirety: “Mate, have you gone gay?” 

3: Note that the article lists BBC Sherlock as a prominent example of queerbaiting.

4: The case is not solved. The character was, in fact, preparing for a murder. Sherlock didn't miss the obvious because he was asexual.

5: In addition to its issues with women, the show can also be criticized for its [orientalism](http://madammiaow.blogspot.com/2010/08/sherlock-and-wily-orientals-bbc-stuck.html) and its general lack of characters of color, its lack of out trans characters and characters with permanent physical disabilities, and its glorification of violence and of the surveillance state. There are very likely additional problems I haven't picked up on due to my own privilege.

6: There are implications that John was in [a relationship with Major Sholto](http://deducingbbcsherlock.tumblr.com/post/86272475274/i-dont-know-if-you-wrote-about-this-before-but), and many people interpret his interactions with the corporal in The Hound of Baskerville as flirting, a reading [supported by a deleted scene](http://josiethedreamer.tumblr.com/post/102085320079/warmth-and-constancy-onthelosingside-1013).

7: Perhaps, like the scientist and the detective, he finds it easier to rule out incorrect interpretations, to say what he knows he is not.

8: This was arguably their first conception in [the never-aired pilot](http://sherlockfuckyeah.tumblr.com/post/78763815573/shinka-john-in-the-unaired-pilot-openly), nicknamed by some fans “the gay pilot”.

9: Like, say, _The Complete Sherlock Holmes_?


End file.
